I still feel a twinge of nostalgia when I think of Neocron. It could have been so much more than it ever was. It sports my favorite crafting system — being a constructor, building that 5-slot uber-pistol was sweet. But alas, my friend and I turned our backs on that game months ago and haven’t looked back. But I’ve wanted to know what ever became of the expansion/sequel “The Dome of York”. Well I didn’t have to look any further than Van Hemlock (a new addition to the blogroll) for his review. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like I’m missing much. It looks like more of the same. While that’s not necessarily a bad thing with Neocron, I think I’ll be passing on Neocron 2. If you’re interested, read Van Hemlocks review of The Dome of York…
Archives for May 2005
John Dvorak Needs a Hug
I was out of town this weekend and missed this column by PC Magazine’s indomitable John Dvorak. I love reading his columns mostly because his narcissistic pronouncements on all things technology are always amusing. He’s a “shotgun prophet” (my term). He boldy shots off predictions, shotgun style. When something hits he can boldly proclaim he “called it”. Nevermind his hundreds of other predictions that never materialized. They’ve been relegated to the magazine’s archives, never to be heard from again. When he isn’t predicting the downfall of a technology he’s jumping bandwagons, switching sides midstream. Just recently he’s gone from HD-DVD’s camp to Blu-Ray’s DVD format camp. I believe that’s called hedging your bets. He’ll be correct either way. Genius! Unfortunately, this column is a wild swing-and-miss. He may hit genius once and a while, but this is so “Might Casey striking out”-like that it’s embarassing. Of course, in typical Dvorak fashion, he hedges his bet:
I really can’t imagine this scene continuing as it is for much longer. I suspect that the next generation of machines will be the last—or at least the last in the current boom market. It will be downhill from there.
It’s true, the video game market is peaking, reaching saturation. Once it hits that high, it has no where to go but down. But that doesn’t mean the next round of consoles won’t sell a billion units. I see the industry plateauing but I don’t see a rapid descent anytime soon. I just have to hearitly disagree with Dvorak this time.
This has, of course, attracted the attention of fellow gaming bloggers. Bill at DQ takes Dvorak to task much more detailed then I have here. SmashBOT didn’t have anything nice to say about it. Josh says Dvorak is out of touch (he is) but he (and Greg Costikayan) think there may be a shred of truth in what has been said.
Paging Esquire Thompson
Let’s hope super-chimp-lawyer Jack Thompson doesn’t get word of this. I wonder how his personal injury lawyering skills are. (We already know where he stands on Personal Responsibility). This quote from the defendant’s testimoney strikes me as rather fruity:
In emotional testimony on Thursday, DeMeo said that Alexander had put his hand on DeMeo’s knee and made him push the accelerator down hard, then grabbed the emergency brake and sent the car into a skid.
Are those euphemisms?
(from Kotaku)
Update (5/2/05): After Thompson is done with this case, Kotaku has found another candidate for Thompson’s burgeoning Personal Injury Prosecution: Man breaks arm attempting move seen in video game.